Wednesday, April 2, 2014

"Shakespeare 450th Birthday 45-second Film Festival Contest." St. Paul Pioneer Press. Due by noon on 21 April 2014.
This seems like a good deal of fun as well as something that might encourage some interesting, creative approaches to Shakespeare.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press is sponsoring a context ("Brush up your Shakespeare; Start Filming him Now" seems to be one of the tag lines). They're calling for films that are forty-five seconds or shorter that have something to do with Shakespeare:

"We'll consider anything, no matter how wondrous strange. Want to do a hip-hop version of Sonnet 18? A highly condensed version of Romeo and Juliet with an all-cat cast? Henry V’s band of brothers speech in Klingon? Lay on, Macduff."

I'm embedding the official promotional video below. Watch it—and then make something to submit. I know I will!

Update: Actually, I never got around to submitting. But others did. You can find all the films here. And the winner? This was the winner. Enjoy!

Bardfilmis normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilmis a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:

KJ is a professor of English and Literature at a small Christian liberal arts college. In addition to courses entitled “Shakespeare” and “Introduction to Shakespeare,” he teaches a course called “Shakespeare and Film.” Recently, he developed a course titled “Modern Shakespearean Fiction.” Shakespeare is also integrated into nearly all his other courses, including courses on the Literature of Food and the Literature of Humor. Additionally, he is the author of Bardfilm: The Shakespeare and Film Microblog. But you may have known that already.